For his 50th birthday, 49th to be precise, but we’re not going to quibble with a masterpiece, The Mom and the Whorecult film by Jean Eustache, and one of the banners of what has been called “The New Wave”, has therefore had a makeover.
It was restored by Les Films du Losange and producer Charles Gillibert, to return to theaters, and thus perhaps attract both a new audience and those who want to see it again. Especially since, and this is also what made its legend, the film has long been difficult to see or difficult to find.
Released in 1973, this love triangle story (to sum up), 3 hours and 40 minutes long, had rather caused a scandal, especially at the Cannes Film Festival, in particular for the crudeness of its dialogues, in which there is a lot of talk about sex. And on May 17, back to Cannes for an official screening for The Mom and the Whore in the restored version, in the presence in particular of the actress Françoise Lebrun, who evoked the journey of the film:
“I have the impression that ultimately what had been done in this film is not anecdotal, finally is not necessarily linked to an era.”
The actress Françoise Lebrunat franceinfo
“When I attended the revivals at Beaubourg or at the Cinémathèque, continues Françoise Lebrun, he each time there were young people who were affected by this. So from generation to generation, the spectrum is wide. These are feelings that you can’t explain, this feeling – not so much during filming – but the moment I saw the movie for the first time, when I said to myself, and I’ve been saying this for 40 years now, this movie is like a meteor in the sky of cinema.
Françoise Lebrun, very applauded and very moved at the end of the screening this year in the company of Jean-Pierre Léaud, with no doubt a thought for Bernadette Laffont, the third protagonist of the film, who died in 2013.
Since the beginning of the #Metoo movement in the fall of 2017 (a series of testimonies by women on acts of rape or sexual assault involving famous or anonymous men), the themes of feminism, sorority or toxic masculinity are regularly treated in the cinema, and it is the latter which inspired the British director Alex Garland to Menhis new film.
After his remarkable works of science fiction Ex Machina then Annihilation on Netflix with Natalie Portman, this time he introduces us to Harper, a young woman bereaved by the suicide of her violent companion, who decides to leave London for a large and beautiful house in the countryside, and finds herself confronted with strange and horrifying phenomena , and to men who all look the same. Visually splendid, very original, not to say baroque, and frightening, Men is a real success, with two actors, Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear, perfect.
Finally, a small step for cinema, but a big one for the Cretaceous: Jurassic World: The World After, by Colin Trevorrow, and its many dinosaurs also noisily landed in French cinemas on Wednesday June 8. Not really a scenario and a vague story, which is only a pretext to link action scenes with many, many creatures.
In the end the entertainment is there, and we have a lot of fun finding Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, together for the first time since the original and unsurpassable Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg in 1993.
And since we are talking about blockbuster films and re-releases, know that is also available in theaters since this Friday in certain cinemas, the new restored version of Pact of Wolvesa French film by Christophe Gans, released on our screens in 2001.